Harassing Tourists Is a Time-Honored Tradition at the Great Pyramids: Know the Rules

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US Embassy in Cairo Warns US Citizens About “Overly Aggressive” Pyramids Touts Who Frighten the Dickens (Dollars) Out of Tourists

A tourist “touches” the pyramids for a photo next to three underemployed cameleers. Touts approach tourists unsolicited. The secret to tranquility: A polite but firm “No thank you.”

Harassing tourists on Giza plateau is a time-honored tradition in Egypt—and it even happened to me a few days ago when I visited the pyramids with Dario Ferro, the photographer who skied down the pyramids.

At the foot of the hill leading up to the main ticket entrance, a line of men wearing jeans and T-shirts formed a line forcing the taxi driver to stop. Two guys leaped onto the back of the car, while two more men pounded on the passenger windows shouting in English that taxis were not allowed inside the antiquities site, and that we needed to hire a horse carriage. (A bald-faced lie; any taxi or private car can be driven into the site provided you buy a ticket for it.) One disheveled man, who appeared totally unaware of how unappealing a prospect he might present as a prospective guide, tried to open the driver’s door and actually spit through the front window at our driver as he proceeded up the hill to the site gate. The driver, shaking with fury, managed to control the car and keep his wits; he got us to the ticket booth and up the plateau to a panoramic viewpoint, where the touts were slightly more polite and took turns beseeching us to buy plaster Nefertiti busts and sit on camels.

The car-leaping tactic has been going on for years, but over the weekend the U.S. Embassy in Cairo took the unusual step of chastising the government’s “visible lack of security” at the most famous site in Egypt. The embassy for the first time warned American citizens about “over-aggressive vendors” at the Pyramids and incidents of “angry groups of individuals surrounding and pounding on the vehicles—and in some cases attempting to open the vehicle’s doors.” (The timing of the U.S. Embassy warning was interesting, but I hadn’t made a citizen’s complaint.) Egypt’s Tourism Minister angrily dismissed the U.S. Embassy’s description of “severely frightened visitors” as “baseless,” since the government deploys tourist police at the site. Outnumbered by touts, the police we saw did nothing to intervene when thuggish would-be guides surrounded our vehicle. Instead, five police chatted with our driver next to a “No-Parking” sign where we stopped to take photos of the Sphinx.

Travel often requires accepting a situation for what it is, adapting to the unpredictable, and understanding the dislocation between a postcard view and real experience. As Egypt’s unemployment rate grows, and tourism fails to recover amid the uncertain aftermath of the 2011 revolution, the frustration of the pyramid touts is growing. My guest had been to the pyramids 36 years ago and was curious to see how things had changed. So we went in a taxi to get the unvarnished, Mad Max experience.

The U.S. Embassy has not gone so far as to warn Americans to stay clear of the Pyramids, but it does advise visitors to go there in the company of “a recommended or trusted guide” and to “closely guard valuables.” It’s essential advice for families traveling with children. But the position also underscores an old model of tourism itself in need of a revolution, one in which the tourist is seen as a cash cow by locals, is urged to be suspicious of ordinary people, and ultimately remains isolated behind a buffer from the real Egypt.